dots-menu
×

Home  »  The Oxford Book of English Verse  »  62. Icarus Robert Jones’s Second Book of Songs and Airs

Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.

Anonymous. 1601

62. Icarus Robert Jones’s Second Book of Songs and Airs

LOVE wing’d my Hopes and taught me how to fly 
Far from base earth, but not to mount too high: 
        For true pleasure 
        Lives in measure, 
        Which if men forsake,         5
Blinded they into folly run and grief for pleasure take. 
 
But my vain Hopes, proud of their new-taught flight, 
Enamour’d sought to woo the sun’s fair light, 
        Whose rich brightness 
        Moved their lightness  10
        To aspire so high 
That all scorch’d and consumed with fire now drown’d in woe they lie. 
 
And none but Love their woeful hap did rue, 
For Love did know that their desires were true; 
        Though fate frownèd,  15
        And now drownèd 
        They in sorrow dwell, 
It was the purest light of heav’n for whose fair love they fell.